Echoes (II) Still Life
by Soo W
Summary: Daral decided not to dust Angelus and he survives his first few weeks. But will she help him find Liam's lover?
1. Default Chapter

Echoes (II) Still Life 1/3

Author's Name: Soo W 

Disclaimer: These characters belong to WB/Joss/Fox etc etc, but certainly not to me. I'm only writing this for fun and therapy. And because there are NEVER, ever, enough flashbacks.

Pairing: Angelus/Darla

Spoilers: Based loosely on events in Becoming and The Prodigal

Short Summary: In pursuit of Anna... a letter is written. Darla decides not to dust Angelus at birth and he makes it through the first weeks of his unlife relatively unscathed. But Angelus is still obsessed with Anna. Darla helps him find her, but will there be a price for her assistance? Darla's POV.

Comments: Follows on from "Echoes (I) - Caught Red-Handed". Second in the "Echoes" series. The "Echoes" series is a sequel to Pen Pictures, and the whole lot starts from the premise that Liam was having an affair with Anna (the servant who appears in a flashback in AtS) before he was turned. [ There will be three more in this series shortly: "Chosen" from Anna's POV, "The Wheel's Kick" from Angelus' POV and "Kaleidoscopic" from everyone's POV. ]

Echoes (II) Still Life 1/3 

My beautiful boy is sleeping. His face, this evening, has lost some of its gauntness and taken on a serene, almost satiated look. Long may it last.

As he slumbers, I take up my pen and begin to write.

"Dearest Anna..." 

I couldn't believe it when he told me this servant girl could read. His Father insisted on her learning when she first came to live with the family, he said. Presumably so she could read the bible in her leisure hours. Ah! the value of educating the masses. Now the problem of how to get a message to her is resolved, in an instant.

"Dearest Anna..." 

But I am tired, and my talent for invention has temporarily deserted me. Giving up for the moment, I gather my silk wrap around me and join him on the divan. I trace my fingers over the bite on his neck, and he wriggles under my touch, turning onto his back like a big cat. Stretching his limbs. Wanting to be stroked.

It is a great improvement. When we left his village I thought I might have to do with him what I have done with the others. His first morning was terrible. We barely made the farmhouse before sunrise, and while I dispatched its occupants by snapping their feeble necks (not even I could take more blood) he became violently ill.

This I expected, of course. It is unavoidable. As useless to tell a fledgling to reign in their gluttony, as to plead with the sun not to rise or ask an arrow to change its course after leaving the bolt. 

But it was hard to see him suffer nevertheless. The blood came back, a blackened and congealing slurry. I knew he would continue to heave and retch until nothing of his first night's feeding remained, the shaking would take hours to subside, and the memory of it would prevent him feeding again until hunger forced the issue, or he starved. However, there is a purpose for everything, and it will serve him well in days to come. He must break with the past, as we all must at some time, and carrying the blood of his family around with him would delay and confuse the matter. 

My previous children did not manage the transition successfully, and I was left with no choice but to relieve them of their torment. Well, true, Justine did the work for me by racing out to greet the sun, but she was quite mad by that time and if she hadn't, I would have probably tossed her into the light myself, sooner or later. Philippe was more difficult, arguably more sane, at least on the surface. It was not until he began collecting the heads of his victims that I decided he was beyond recall. I could not introduce such a failure to the head of the family and expect to retain my place in it. Such a wealth of trouble with heads... it seemed only fitting to remove his and have done with it.

The continued existence of the boy's lover does trouble me somewhat, although, now we have succeeded in our search for her, he seems more content. What lies behind that contentedness, there is the rub. If he merely desires her, it is an impulse easily satisfied and soon done, with her close at hand. If he wishes to reach an understanding with her, that is difficult and dangerous. If he plans to share his transformation with her, it will have to be stopped. 

He is too young to share his blood with others, and anyway, I have no appetite for raising two at the same time. A pair of lovers as well! What could be worse? 

We departed his village as soon as he recovered enough to travel. The boy, who, ever since he killed his sister, insists I call him Angelus, seemed happy enough to leave. Then, once we were safely enclosed in a carriage and four, he asked in his softly lilting way, if we could go and find Anna now, before we travelled to all those places I had promised.

Admittedly, I think it wise to let him have his way in this, but that didn't stop me using his request for my own advantage.

I feigned concern that he chased after another woman, and reminded him he had yet to prove himself to me in that way. Men are so tiresomely predictable, and there was still enough of the man in him to rise to this obvious baiting. He shyly approached me and I gave him sufficient encouragement, so that within a few minutes he was lifting me against the crimson cushions and making excellent use of his new-found strength.

Afterwards, he preened himself and seemed to invite me to compare him with other lovers. So I did (although not candidly - an honest appraisal would not have served my purpose) and that took the wind out of his sails somewhat. Even as I savoured the after-effects of our first furious union - a feverish glow ignited within me by his skill and touch - I pointed out as many fictional deficiencies as I could imagine, and remarked that there must be some great feeling between him and his Anna still, for that was the only explanation I could conceive for his lack of passion.

He was mortified, poor child, which was sufficient amusement for the journey. As the day unfolded outside, I allowed him to make it up to me, several times. 

Oh, one day (and the day will not, I fear, be short in coming) he will lose this comical human gullibility, and then I will have more difficulty controlling him. For now, he prefers to rely on his human senses; he hears me deny that he is a good lover, and so believes. Soon, he will be able to sense me, and know that he has pleased me despite anything I say. Then only my superior physical strength will remain, and that for just a few years, as he takes souls and nourishment, and his power increases. 

But, for now, he is a lock of hair that I may shape into any curl or kink that suits me and my purpose. 


	2. Chapter 2

Echoes (II) Still Life 2/3

Author's Name: Soo W 

Disclaimer: These characters belong to WB/Joss/Fox etc etc, but certainly not to me. I'm only writing this for fun and therapy. And because there are NEVER, ever, enough flashbacks.

Pairing: Angelus/Darla

Spoilers: Based loosely on events in Becoming and The Prodigal

Short Summary: In pursuit of Anna... a letter is written. Darla decides not to dust Angelus at birth and he makes it through the first weeks of his unlife relatively unscathed. But Angelus is still obsessed with Anna. Darla helps him find her, but will there be a price for her assistance? Darla's POV.

Comments: Follows on from "Echoes (I) - Caught Red-Handed". Second in the "Echoes" series. The "Echoes" series is a sequel to Pen Pictures, and the whole lot starts from the premise that Liam was having an affair with Anna (the servant who appears in a flashback in AtS) before he was turned. [ There will be three more in this series shortly: "Chosen" from Anna's POV, "The Wheel's Kick" from Angelus' POV and "Kaleidoscopic" from everyone's POV. ]

Echoes (II) Still Life 2/3 

I asked him where we should look for Anna, and he said he didn't know. She had no family. The last person who saw her was Molly and she didn't say where Anna was heading.

"Didn't? Be more precise. Couldn't or wouldn't? Or did you even ask?"

After some discussion it transpired that Molly had a relative in a village close by, and accordingly I ordered the carriage be turned back.

So began the trail that led us here, to this bustling thoroughfare in London. One of my favourite cities: the buildings range from the palatial to the squalid within a few feet, the people are so very numerous that I only have to reach out a hand to take a meal, and morals are as loose as befits a great city dedicated to the pursuit of power and money. Everyone is catered for in London, even vampires. 

It is years since I first came, but I regularly return. Even so, the visit has an extra charm this time because I see it through the eyes of Angelus, who has never dreamed of such buildings, such people and such moral laxity. His wide-eyed delight is an entertainment in itself, and he sets about the removal of London's prostitutes with a fervour that threatens to put the floggers at Bridewell out of business. Mother Whybourne must be spinning in her pox-ridden grave.

The girl was not difficult to trace. Molly's aunt was a toothless old crone, with so little life in her it hardly seemed worth the energy it took to snuff it out. She told us, tearfully, that the precious Anna stayed only one night before departing for Dublin to look for work, and gave us the address of a boarding house there where we'd be most likely to find her. By the time we arrived, she was aboard a boat for London, under the protection of a Lord Rianey and his elegant family. I smelt a seduction, but the girl obviously is a trusting sort. We take a boat ourselves, and learn that she departed the protection of his Lordship shortly after disembarking. There is a rumour that he tried to welcome her to London behind a coil of rope, presumably in the traditional way a leech of that kind welcomes a penniless young woman under his protection. 

I watched Angelus closely as we heard the boatmen toss the name and reputation of his sweet Anna around. They drank her health as a wench of some spirit, and, the story goes, a mean right hook and a sharp knee. When I asked him if she treated his advances in a similar way, he turned on me, yellow-eyed and snarling. 

I was not afraid of him, and he knew it, but this is not the point. He lost control. For the first time, he found he could not subdue it, that thing within, and it exploited his anger, used his human body for entirely its own will. Young vampires frequently believe that their turning is merely a way to greater freedom, sensuality and strength. When they realise there is a price to pay...

Angelus' shock was palpable. He plunged off into the bowels of the vessel, and I didn't see him for several hours. When he returned, he was apologetic and smooth-faced, but underneath? I sensed firecrackers, gunpowder, volcanoes on the verge of erupting. A bonfire, on which I intend to roast the last shreds of his humanity to crisp blackness. All this for a servant girl, a person so lowly she has to accept help from Molly and her aunt. I know he feels the absurdity; I equally know he is powerless to confront it. 

This meeting between them may well be the making of him, and I am so keen to hasten it that I risked the early dusk to bring him to the place. The last link in the chain was the hardest to forge, but we were lucky. One of the waggoneers at the port remembered her.

"O yes, Sir. Lovely girl. Irish, like yourself, as you say. One of the other girls took pity on her and offered to introduce her at a public house in the Temple. She was easy on the eye, it's odds on she'll have gotten a job there. Those girls are ten-a-penny but this one had a spark about her, I wouldn't have minded a bit of it myself..."

Angelus grabbed the man by his throat and squeezed.

"My love?" I intervened. "There are several hundred taverns in London. Let the nice man tell you which one, and then you can take his head off."

Earlier this evening, we walked in, both scanning the bawdy crowds for her. Five paces, and I had to stop, dead in my tracks. (SHE is here.)

My charge was in mindless pursuit of his desires by this time, and under any other circumstances I would have been royally entertained. But then, it was dangerous to have him acting so wildly. He began seizing anything feminine by the arm and yanking it into the field of his tunnel vision before discarding it and moving to the next. I forced myself to follow him in, and gave him a taste of his own medicine. I flattened him against a wall and made him attend to me.

"Angelus. We can't stay. Not tonight."

There was a minor struggle and, for his own good, I took his hand, and twisted a finger hard enough to snap the bone. He yelped, but stopped writhing and listened.

"We have to go. NOW."

"Why?" He growled at me. (Again! Bless him, how he'll suffer, before he learns. I twisted the finger a little further.) He changed, just briefly, and then regained his composure just enough to spit out the words, "She's HERE. I can feel her."

I smiled at him and raised the fractured digit to my lips. "That's good, my love. It shows you are learning. But you misread the signs." I used the finger to draw him close to me and the nearness of the pain forced him to follow, like a ring through the nose may force obedience from a bull.

As we reached the door, I looked back and tried to sense where she was hiding. Meanwhile my clever lad was also learning that nothing felt as bad as he expected it would, and he was capable of ignoring pain when there was an important matter to provide distraction. He stopped again by the door, and when I turned to him, his face was petulant. In order to remain in control, I had to throw him a scrap of an explanation. 

"It isn't Anna you sense, boy. It's the Slayer."


	3. Chapter 3

Echoes (II) Still Life 3/3

Author's Name: Soo W 

Disclaimer: These characters belong to WB/Joss/Fox etc etc, but certainly not to me. I'm only writing this for fun and therapy. And because there are NEVER, ever, enough flashbacks.

Pairing: Angelus/Darla

Spoilers: Based loosely on events in Becoming and The Prodigal

Short Summary: In pursuit of Anna... a letter is written. Darla decides not to dust Angelus at birth and he makes it through the first weeks of his unlife relatively unscathed. But Angelus is still obsessed with Anna. Darla helps him find her, but will there be a price for her assistance? Darla's POV.

Comments: Follows on from "Echoes (I) - Caught Red-Handed". Second in the "Echoes" series. The "Echoes" series is a sequel to Pen Pictures, and the whole lot starts from the premise that Liam was having an affair with Anna (the servant who appears in a flashback in AtS) before he was turned. [ There will be three more in this series shortly: "Chosen" from Anna's POV, "The Wheel's Kick" from Angelus' POV and "Kaleidoscopic" from everyone's POV. ]

Echoes (II) Still Life 3/3 

I returned to the tavern alone a few days later, and found out easily enough that the precious Anna lives near to her place of work, in a house of tiny lodgings a few minutes walk away. So it became necessary to entice her away; to arrange a meeting between her and the boy. I will not risk my neck and his by laying siege so close to the Slayer's nightly patrol. 

"Dearest Anna..."

Or perhaps that should be "Dear Anna", or maybe just "Anna". They lived under the same roof, so I can't think they ever corresponded formally. Nevertheless, he delights in being reckless, and I imagine lots of billet-doux, notes arranging assignations and other foolishness. I must ask him when he wakes.

"I have been searching for you ever since you left my Father's house so suddenly."

Well, that is no more than the truth, and she has no reason to doubt it. She is here. He is here. Ergo...

"You should not have left Galway so soon, and without speaking to me first. I have only ever wanted your happiness. I have settled things with my Father to my own satisfaction, and he does seek not stand in our way, I promise."

I think it best to appeal to the girl's sense of honour. After all, she left him once already, showing a fascinating immunity to his physical charms, and has proven her strength of character by staying away. I don't think "Come to me and we can be together as we always wished" is going to suffice.

"Come to me and we can be together as we always wished."

Although, it's important to say it somewhere, obviously. No-one is totally immune.

"I no longer offer a partial devotion, but all of myself: heart, soul, body, hand - there shall be nothing wanting that will give you peace of mind and no short change for your desires."

A pretty turn of phrase. I can't recall where I've stolen it from. Perhaps one of my gentlemen friends wrote so to me once, when I was the toast of the New World. 

Angelus stirs, and rises from the bed to join me at my escritoire.

"I would not importune you at your lodgings or place or work. I know your feelings too well, and have utmost regard for your respectability in this matter."

Now I may be going to far. After all, she did know him; she must have had some inkling of what he was. Still, I can imagine her pretty face shedding tears by this time, when she thinks of how she has wronged the poor lad, so I will leave it in.

Angelus kisses the back of my neck to show his approval, and then asks me what "importune" means. I laugh, and tell him he will soon learn by doing. I allow him to undo the tortoiseshell clasp from my hair and take out the pins one by one. He arranges it in a glacier flow down my back, and remarks that he prefers it thus, unfettered.

Well, I think it's time to close the letter and give my attention to other matters. He has defied me today, and has some amends to make.

"Do me the honour of meeting with me on London Bridge, so that I may at least be allowed to explain myself to you, and be convinced you are well and want for nothing I can, with propriety, provide for you. I shall be there every night from this night forward, between the hours of midnight and one. There are, even at that late hour, always crowds there, and we may meet and talk without being conspicuous. I will be looking for you."

I hand him the pen and he signs the letter with a flourish. Dear thing - I like him a little better with each passing hour.

An hour later, I return to the letter, and add an afterthought. 

"Come alone."


End file.
